Christina Mac comes from a small town in the hills of eastern Kentucky. She grew up in Little Pine Creek Church, a white-frame church with about sixty people on a good Sunday, and she was playing piano for the service by the time she was twelve.
The spring she turned seventeen, a tornado came through the valley. It tore the roof off the church and took her family's house with it. Her family got out, and so did most of the town. For a year the congregation met in the high school gym, and Christina led the singing with an acoustic guitar because the piano was gone.
The first Sunday in the gym, the whole room sang the old Doxology. She says it was the loudest she ever heard that church sing, and it is the song she still opens with.
After the storm she started helping at the county shelter, reuniting families with the pets the wind had scattered. She works there now.
The church recorded those gym services on a phone. A regional worship collective heard one of the recordings, invited her to sing on their next live album, and her song "Borrowed Room" became the one people asked for by name.
She still wears jeans and a sweater on stage, and she'd rather the congregation sing louder than she does.
Christina stands for the small church, and for the town that shows up the morning after with hammers and casseroles.
